Some rail vehicle systems are used for transporting various freight, including, for example, coal, lumber, and manufactured goods, along a route from an origination location to a destination location. The rail vehicle systems may be long with a large number of cars in order to increase the amount of freight moved during each trip. For example, a coal train carrying coal from coal mines to electrical power plants may include at least one hundred coupled coal cars and multiple propulsion-generating locomotives, spanning a length that exceeds a mile. The cars experience longitudinal forces due to the push and/or pull of the locomotives on the cars. The longitudinal forces around curves may cause lateral movement of the cars relative to the tracks. For example, compressive forces on a car may cause the car to jack-knife along a curve, forcing the wheels of the car to move laterally outward relative to the rails (e.g., radially outward relative to the curve). In addition, tension on a car may cause the car to string-line along the curve, which pulls the wheels of the car laterally inward relative to the rails (e.g., radially inward relative to the curve). With sufficient force, the wheels may be shifted to an extent that flanging occurs, which is when a flange of a wheel contacts a side of the rail. During flanging, the wheel simultaneously engages both a top and the side of the rail which causes metal-to-metal grinding and produces high wheel and rail wear. The friction created by the metal-to-metal grinding also provides resistance which slows the rail vehicle system. High wheel and rail wear results in a high frequency of vehicle and track maintenance, such as replacing worn wheels and sections of rails. In addition, flanging increases fuel costs as the locomotives have to increase tractive efforts to compensate for the increased friction and grinding between the wheel and the rail in order to maintain a desired speed.
It is generally known that more aggressive train operations (for example, faster speeds) around curves increase wear rates and fuel use, so less aggressive train operations around curves may be desirable from a maintenance and fuel cost perspective. However, railroads typically have performance incentives for increasing the speed of a vehicle system along the route, such as to arrive at the destination by a set time, maintain a high throughput along the route (so as not to slow other rail vehicle systems traveling along the route), and the like, and these performance incentives have quantifiable monetary values (for example, receive a bonus for arriving at the destination by a given time). On the other hand, a direct and quantifiable correlation between train operations along curves and the resulting wheel and rail wear is not generally known, so the railroads do not factor in maintenance costs when determining how to operate the rail vehicles in order to increase monetary profit. A need remains for a system and method for reducing wheel and rail wear along curves in a route.